Canada

XR Design

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Product Design

UX Research

Master of Science - MS

Bachelor of Engineering - BE

Ajay Menon

Senior Product Designer, XR

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Critical-thinking

Design systems

Illustration

Unity

Unreal Engine

Figma

Miro

Adobe Creative Suite

Presentation skills

User research

Usability Testing

Prototyping

Product roadmap

Product strategy

Qualitative research

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

How to ask for a promotion and negotiate for salary raise?

Negotiating a job offer

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

How to define and execute a successful launch and managing stakeholders expectations. (eg. MVP)

Launching new products or features

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

How to create personas, and leverage them in design.

Creating and leveraging user personas

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

How to define an ambitious product vision and how to best communicate it to stakeholders?

Creating a product vision

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

How to conduct interviews, what to ask, and how to analyze your results? (eg. user interview)

Conducting effective customer interviews

Working on an Incubation project to design and productize advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) capabilities for multiple use cases in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector.

I  worked as part of the Automotive, Conceptual Design and Extended Reality (ACX) group and integrated into the XR Core team at Autodesk to research and prototype cross-Autodesk AR/VR/MR (XR) capabilities, establish a signature XR experience across multiple product platforms, and thereby help product teams deliver XR value to our customers. 

Apart from generating high fidelity design artifacts to support communication, evaluation, and implementation of new design solutions, I helped in crafting design directions and specifications that support an iterative development process, in a timely manner. I connected with users, and assist in customer research and analytics activities, to outline present conditions and gain insights into future areas of development. My work was presented to a wide range of audiences including users, management, engineering, and quality assurance.

I designed and prototyped next generation mixed reality experiences and spatial computing tools. As an experience designer within Magic Leap's Product Experience and Prototyping team, I wore multiple hats. A few of my main responsibilities included developing and user testing rough spatial experience prototypes and proof of concepts for internal design reviews, story boarding user journeys, creating concept sketches, and building spatial experiences for client presentations.

I worked closely with the design director and a multi-disciplinary team to conduct user centered research and build UX solutions for major healthcare clients. I designed research tools and assisted in conducting client workshops aimed for co-designing complex user experience solutions.

Designworks is an independent design consultancy owned by the BMW group. I worked as a Strategic Designer within their Creative Consulting department. My main responsibility was to provide research and strategy support on a variety of internal and external client projects. 

CLIENTS:

BMW, Boeing, John Deere, The VF Corporation (The North Face), Sea Ray

PROJECTS:
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- BMW 360 Context
- BMW Advanced Design / Symbols of Success
- BMW Advanced Design / Software First
- BMW Experience Modes
- BMW X4 Character Workshop
​
- Boeing HorizonX
- The VF Corporation (The North Face) / Creative Visions
- John Deere Construction
- SeaRay
​
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RESPONSIBILITIES:
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- Front end research and strategy support for various client projects
- Competitive landscaping and bench-marking across multiple tiers and markets globally
- Support in the framing and synthesis of creative and business strategy for client projects
- Assistance to story-boarding for BMW character workshops
- Sourcing and editing of visual material to be presented to executive level members of BMW's Design Group
- Building desk research decks and professional client presentations
- Participating and contributing to client meetings, interviews, and workshops
- Maintaining and organizing up-to-date master files for BMW 360 Context
- Large format printing and support in organizing various client workshops
- Collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team of strategists, industrial designers, interaction designers, automotive  designers, creative directors, and strategic partners to foster innovation and business growth for companies worldwide.

Xtelligent is a mobility start-up, and currently a portfolio company nested inside the Los Angeles Clean-Tech incubator. We are envisioning the future of connected autonomous transportation through the evolution of traffic signals and road intersections.  

I work as an individual contributor, with the co-founders of Xtelligent and alongside consultants from the Los Angeles Clean-tech Incubator, and mainly focus on conducting user research and developing UX visualizations to create pitch decks for their targeted investors and city officials. 

The scope of my work includes – conducting field research and user interviews, physical and screen-based product design and development, 3D modeling and rendering for creating different UX visualizations, and contributing to building pitch decks.

UBER Elevate aims to demonstrate it's first on-demand urban air transportation service to the public in 2020. As a multidisciplinary team of 5 designers, we were challenged to envision this future by designing the complete user experience for a holistic system including eVTOLs, Waterports and a Mobile app interface aimed at delivering a safe, hassle-free, and seamless experience for busy commuters in Dubai.

As a Transportation UX Designer, I did the following things-

-	Spearheaded the secondary and primary user research on stakeholders, particularly people living in Dubai, private jet experts, commercial airplane, and helicopter pilots.

-	Collaborated in mapping out future trends to inform economic and business opportunities in the future and the design itself.

-	Generated actionable insights and opportunities to research questions and business goals, to ultimately fuel ideation and evaluate designs.

-	Collaborated in ideation and brainstorming and designed a unique user experience concept based in Dubai, for fast paced and hassle-free travel.

-	Planned and helped in the execution of a full-scale mockup of the eVtol vehicle for user testing.

-	Produced high level 3D cad renderings and video and motion elements for final presentation.

-	Represented my team and presented the work at the Uber Elevate Summit 2018.

Collaborated in a 3 day intense 'Design Storm' hosted by ArtCenter College of Design, working with a hand-picked team of trans-disciplinary designers and Amazon's Senior Design Team to innovate and invent  new ways to make education and the life of learning more engaging and delightful through Alexa and Alexa-based products.

The Los Angeles Innovation Delivery Team (I-Team) functions as an in-house design consultancy for LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. It was formed and sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and is housed inside the Mayor's Office of Budget and Innovation in the City Hall of Los Angeles. The main project I was involved with was aimed at helping the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to build a policing workforce for the 21st century through advancing its recruiting and hiring practices.

As a UX Design and Research fellow, I was tasked with the following things-

-	Worked closely with the LAPD, the personnel department, operational and budget teams and cross-functionally with project managers, data scientists, designers, and user researchers in a fast-moving agile environment.

-	Successfully identified, mapped, and maintained a list of all the stakeholders involved in the project and reached out to them for collaboration and fixing schedule for interviews and user research.

-	Planned, organized, and participated in design workshops for selecting the right mix of research methods to provide actionable insights to research questions and business goals.

-	Quantified and analyzed data using affinity mapping after conducting ethnographic research, usability studies, case studies, heuristic evaluations, stakeholder and focus group interviews, surveys, shadowing stakeholders, developing user personas, and creating journey maps.

-	Innovated different brainstorming activities and games for the I-team.

-	Orchestrated and spearheaded the ideation sessions for the team to come up with innovative ideas and business case scenarios.

-	Volunteered for the Mayor's Gender Equity event held in the University of Southern California.

-	Designed the Los Angeles Budget Summary Cover for the year 2017-18.

-	Designed directional signage and an Art Installation for the Mayor's State of the City event.

-	Updated the design of the Sustainability City Plan - 2nd Annual Report.

Collaborated in a trans-disciplinary team along with Nestle, for 3 day intense DesignStorm, to look into the latest Food Trends and developments in food technology, on-demand services, delivery plans & amp; partnerships, products, applications, smart homes / kitchens and retail innovations.

A Transportation UX project sponsored by the Arroyo Group of Pasadena with the goal of developing an Advanced Transit System Design solution for the City of Inglewood that would link the Crenshaw metro station to the Forum and the upcoming NFL Stadium in Inglewood.

A complete multi-modal mass transportation system concept was designed, developed and validated after rigorous Primary, Statistical and qualitative research on the neighboring areas, traffic flows, user interactions and perceptions, business development, the history of Inglewood City,  and advanced modes of transportation available and proposed.

This concept has been studied and proposed by the Arroyo Group to the City of Inglewood to be implemented in the future.

Astra is an Activity-Based Virtual Reality Tool for the Wellness of Astronauts in Deep Space

The environment in Deep Space is extremely confining and claustrophobic, even for people with long years of training and military backgrounds. Social Interactivity is a major concern in such high-stress environments and every possible measure must be taken to avoid a psychotic or hostile situation up there. Astra is a user experience solution for Astronauts to help them maintain their healthy physical condition and psychological sanity in space, to keep them active, functioning, and always productive during a long-distance exploration mission, and add value to their lives as they travel to Mars or beyond.

-	Planned and conducted secondary and primary user research on people living in extreme habitats like submariners, Arctic and Antarctic researchers, astronauts, pioneer living, and people suffering from physical isolation due to old age and other difficulties.

-	Designed studies that address both user behavior and attitudes and conducted user research using a wide variety of qualitative methods and a subset of quantitative methods.

-	Quantified and analyzed data using affinity mapping after conducting ethnographic research, usability studies, case studies, heuristic evaluations, stakeholder and focus group interviews, surveys, developing user personas, creating journey maps, and benchmarking similar ideas.

-	Generated actionable insights and opportunities to research questions and business goals, to ultimately fuel ideation and evaluate designs.

-	Designed a novel user experience concept to address social isolation in deep space. 3D modelled the solution using Rhino, and rendered stills and video using Lumion.

-	Storyboarded and prototyped the design in Unity Engine and user tested it with stakeholders by using HTC Vive and Oculus Rift platforms.

Managed the IEEE social media, Graphic designs for IEEE seminars and workshops.

Graphic designer for Alegria website, promotion and publicity materials, Managing the Social Media publicity and pages of Alegria, Design of promotional brochures and banners for events, publicity and marketing.

Ajay Menon🇨🇦

About Ajay Menon

Expertise

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